Charles Lane | The electric car mistake

The Obama administration’s electric-car fantasy finally may have died on the road between Newark, Del., and Milford, Conn.

The New York Times’s John M. Broder reported Friday that the Tesla Model S electric car he was test-driving repeatedly ran out of juice, partly because cold weather reduces the battery’s range by about 10 percent.

Broder’s trip turned into a nightmare, including a stretch with the conked-out car riding the back of a flatbed truck.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk fired back on Monday, tweeting that Broder’s report is a “fake” and that “vehicle logs” show he “didn’t actually charge to max & took a long detour.”

The Times is standing by its story. My take is that even if Musk is 100 percent right and Broder is 100 percent wrong — which I doubt — Musk loses.

Who wants a $101,000 car that might die just because you feel like taking “a long detour”?